


Clouds Before the Sun

by thewilding



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Deleted Scenes, Justice Hall, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewilding/pseuds/thewilding
Summary: Before he collapsed on the doorstep of Holmes and Russell’s cottage in the Downs, Ali had a terrible fight with Marsh.
Relationships: Ali Hazr/Mahmoud Hazr, Alistair Hughenfort/Marsh Hughenfort





	Clouds Before the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> A pair of deleted scenes from _Justice Hall_. The first is set shortly before the events of the memoir take place. The second takes place soon after Gabriel is brought to Berkshire, before the fancy-dress ball.

_rūḥī fidāʾu ʿidhārin ḥalla wajnata man fāqa l-kawākiba shamsan thumma aqmārā_

_law-lā l-ʿidhāru la-mā sṭāʿat lanā muqalun ilā muḥayyāhu bāhī l-ḥusni ibṣārā_

_ka-sh-shamsi lam tuṭiqi l-abṣāru ruʾyatahā law-lā saḥābun laṭīfun ḥawlahā dārā_

_I would give everything for the sprouting beard that settled on the cheeks of one who – being a sun – is superior to stars and even moons._

_If it weren’t for his beard, our eyes could not look into his face with its radiant beauty,_

_Just like the sun, which our glances could not bear if fine clouds did not surround it._

_-_ [ _Abdallaṭīf Fatḥallāh, 1815_ ](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-gay-and-lesbian-literature/malemale-love-in-classical-arabic-poetry/622370DA08ADF597B3D6BC97941A60B8/core-reader#)

* * *

Before he collapsed on the doorstep of Holmes and Russell’s cottage in the Downs, Ali had a terrible fight with Marsh. 

After weeks of being avoided, Ali had finally confronted him in the drawing room of Justice Hall as he answered correspondence intended for the Duke of Beauville. He had planned his approach as carefully as he and Mahmoud would have strategized any mission in Palestine. And yet, when he entered the drawing room and saw Marsh, his courage faltered in a way it never had in the face of Ottoman assassins and Bedouin scimitars. He barely recognized the tired and pale man bent over his desk in a conservative grey suit. It felt wrong to Ali to look directly at this stranger, with his naked noble chin and rounded shoulders, greying sideburns exposed to the harsh daylight, who had surely never spent two decades wandering the arid desert with only the companionship of one Ali Hazr.

Once on the outskirts of Jaffa, when returning from checking on the mules, he had overheard Amir interrogating Mahmoud about his and Ali’s relationship. “I had originally assumed you brothers, or cousins,” she said. “Perhaps even lovers?” she added cheekily, stumbling over the unfamiliar Arabic term.

Mahmoud had not even blinked at her temerity. “Qareen,” he rumbled, and strode off to hail a passing merchant. Ali knew Amir would have to ask Holmes for the translation. She would likely assume Mahmoud meant “partner,” rather than its more exact connotation: one who is the double of someone’s own soul.

If Mahmoud had been his qareen, what was he now? This question had consumed him as he had wandered the Berkshire pastures all day and then paced most of the night in front of the ancient hearth at Badger Place, restless with anxious energy, while Mrs. Algernon occasionally peeked in with concern. The smothering weight of seven generations of family expectations made it hard to breathe, and the English countryside seemed as implacable and confining as when he was a gangly reckless adolescent chasing after his older cousin Maurice, with his confident dark eyes and mastery of foreign tongues and lust for adventure.

Who then was this man he stood in front of now? He looked like had never wanted for anything and, moreover, didn’t even know what it was like to want. To want a life so badly that you’d trek over miles of sand dunes, bearing your exhausted companion, until your lips cracked and bled and you licked up the salt.

Lost in memory, Ali’s deliberate planning went out of his head and his tongue felt thick, awkward: “Marsh.” The stranger looked up. His eyes were blank and empty. Only the old scar was recognizable, pulled across the side of his face by the tightness in his jaw.

Ali couldn’t hold back the brusque desperation in his voice. “For God’s sake, what are we doing here?” He had originally thought they would only need to be here a few weeks for Mahmoud to sort out his late brother’s affairs, but that had stretched out into months, life bleeding out of the other man as surely as if he had been mortally wounded. When Ali watched Marsh pour himself a double measure of whisky every night, it felt less haram and more like a dying patient trying to numb the pain. 

The head dropped back down. “I am working, Alistair.” Ali dared to take a few steps closer, standing behind the heavy upholstered armchair in front of the desk. A low fire burned in the grate behind Marsh, unable to take the chill out of the room.

He tried reaching for some of his old arrogance. “You have no reason to stay here, Marsh. You don’t owe them anything. God, man, they are all dead.” He didn’t say, you’ll be dead. You’re already a walking corpse. And this house is your mausoleum. 

A heavy sigh. “Alistair-”

“Don’t call me that,” he spat, hands tightening by his sides into white-knuckled fists. Say my name the way you used to, he wanted to beg, like it was warm amber on your tongue, just the two of us tucked into the shadows of the Judean foothills.

Marsh stood slowly, and Ali thought for a moment he would draw closer - but instead he turned to the fireplace, hands locked rigidly behind his back. Even an angry blow, Ali would have welcomed gladly. They hadn’t touched since their return to England, and the easy physicality of their life in Palestine now seemed to Ali like a wishful dream. At Justice Hall, it was like they had become what they already were, technically: barely distant cousins, with no obligation to each other. 

A sigh, then with a tone of resignation: “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Ali reeled as if he had been slapped. This then, was what he had always feared. From the first time he left university to spend his long vacation with his cousin, Ali had never doubted that Mahmoud would die to protect him - and had risked exactly that, more than once - but at the same time had made it abundantly clear without words that if it came down to Ali’s life or the demands of the crown, his duty was first and foremost to his king. And while Ali didn’t feel the same particular sense of zeal (he would always choose Mahmoud first, over everything), he had accepted the possibility because that was who Mahmoud was: loyal to a fault, the embodiment of the pelican that will pierce its own breast to feed its brood. Thankfully, Ali learned to defend himself quite well with his wicked ivory-handled knife and the situation had luckily been avoided so far where Mahmoud would be forced to choose between Ali and the success of the mission.

In Islamic literature, a qareen can be your guardian angel - or a djinn-like demon who will pull you painfully close and scald you with temptation. Only now, with what it felt like was a blade twisted in his chest, did Ali understand why that name had become the word for the other part of his soul.

He hated himself for asking, plaintive: “What about me?”

Marsh didn’t turn around. “My duty lies with the family line.” His voice was cold, expressionless; final. But Ali could see where the direction of his gaze rested on the faded framed photo of Gabriel on the mantle, the unacknowledged son, frozen in time as a young soldier ready to die for his country.

Abruptly, Ali saw Marsh’s future stretching ahead: the insipid proper wife, the heir and the spare, years drained away in this pale cold tomb. There was no place here for Ali, who still burned and trembled with all the heat of the Jordan Valley inside him, and no one to reflect and calm his wildness. Who was he to compete with centuries of Hughenfort noble lineage, with the grand queen Justice in all her icy Baroque splendor, if they chose to call Maurice back to their service?

Ali had fallen in love with a mountain, and he shouldn’t be surprised when it refused to bend. 

Suddenly, he couldn’t stand to be here anymore, hope turned to ashes in his mouth. He backed away, stumbling out the door, knowing that there would be no apology from the other man, who looked only at fading coals.

Ali knew that he should pack and leave immediately; there was no place for him in Justice Hall, blood be damned. He could go to Paris and stay with Iris and Dan; he could go back to Palestine on his own and leap headfirst into the first dangerous mission Mycroft offered. Instead, he called Algy for the motorcar to the station. The proud Ali was going to Sussex to ask for help, and it was the only thing he could have done.

* * *

Weeks later, after checking on five-year-old Gabriel with his formidable nanny, Ali walked through the hustle and bustle of an estate in preparation for a grand fancy-dress ball to welcome a Duke, if not the one they anticipated. Feeling unexpectedly light, he reminded himself to figure out a costume for tonight - something bright and bejeweled. Yes, there was still a mysterious enemy to identify and dispatch, but he much preferred the opportunity for a straightforward fight to wasting away in a country manor. Attempting to hide before Phillida tried to press-gang him into an errand, he ducked into the drawing room and froze.

There, staring into the roaring fire, stood a fearsome broad-shouldered silhouette in black and gold Arab skirts and full keffiyeh. The man radiated ruthless authority, made further threatening by the scar he traced thoughtfully down the side of his face with calloused fingers. Dark stubble on his cheeks, like storm clouds wreathing on the horizon, had already begun to shroud any remaining sign of the Hughenfort genes. In his other hand, his thumb rested gently on the beak of a wooden bird - one of the first that Ali had carved and left scattered on the mantle here, decades ago, before Maurice had found him and spirited him away.

For a moment, Ali drank in the sight and was transported home: he could smell the acrid coffee grounds and black tobacco, feel the Persian rug under him and Mahmoud’s weight over him, sweetly-oiled moustache sliding against his cheek, throat bared. 

“Qareen,” he said involuntarily, shaking.

Mahmoud looked up, pinning him with dark eyes, and Ali saw the return of desire. This was no mortal man; this was a god of old, and he would devour him and leave his bones to bleach in the sands. And Ali knew he would let him, every time. 

“Yes, Ali.” And the mountain smiled, fierce and hungry.


End file.
